The case can be made that origins shouldn't be taught in the science classroom for exactly that reason. That is, not only shouldn't creation be taught in the science classroom, but the origins of life and the universe from a godless perspective shouldn't be taught either.

I don't believe you instigated that. You are, after all, their peer. The people that tend to be the most inflammatory are the want-to-be experts. I suspect any or all of the scientists would be quite willing to have a civil dialog with you.



I subscribe to the GRI newsletter and have read quite a bit of what these scientists have written. I have never read anything where they made the case that life on Earth is more than 10,000 years old. I am not saying none of them haven't ever claimed that - just that I have read quite a bit from them that claims the opposite.

But that's exactly my point! Here, I'll link to their relevant papers and summarise the claims/issues that those papers address:

Roberto Biaggi (with others) "Palaeoenvironments associated with caddisfly-dominated microbial-carbonate mounds from the Tipton Shale Member of the Green River Formation: Eocene Lake Gosiute" - Sedimentology, Volume 54, Number 3, June 2007, pp. 661-699(39)

Discusses eggshell and other materials in the Eocene-era Green River Formation, generally dated as 48 million years old. I can't access the full content of the paper without paying for it, but the abstract does not mention any alternative dating scheme and the title uses the term 'Eocene' to describe the strata.

Raul Esperante (with others) "Fossil whale preservation implies high diatom accumulation rate in the Miocene–Pliocene Pisco Formation of Peru" - Geology; February 2004; v. 32; no. 2; p. 165-168

This is actually the closest thing among the set to a creationist paper in a peer reviewed journal. It talks about some fossil whales in an 80 m deep layer of limestone. Although it uses the term 'Miocene-Pliocene', suggesting a period between 24 million and 1 million years ago, the clear intent is that the sediments were laid down very rapidly... potentially to be used to argue for a worldwide flood.

Ronald Nalin (with others) "Raised Pleistocene marine terraces of the Crotone peninsula (Calabria, southern Italy): facies analysis and organization of their deposits" - Sedimentary Geology, Volume 172, Issues 1-2, 15 November 2004, Pages 165-185

This discusses limestone terraces off the Italian coast. (Remember that limestone is made from the remains of living things, so requires life to exist on earth before its formation.) Here's the key sentence from the abstract: "They are related to the interplay between Pleistocene sea-level changes and the progressive uplift of the Calabrian Arc from the middle Pleistocene onwards." The Pleistocene era was from about 1.8 million years ago to about 12,000 years ago.

Jacques Sauvagnat (with others) "Dating and progradation of the Urgonian limestone from the Swiss Jura to South-East France" - Zeitschrift der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Geowissenschaften, Volume 158, Number 4, December 2007 , pp. 1025-1062(38)

This paper uses fossil results to date the limestone in the Swiss mountains, and confirms that the stone dates from the Barremian (130 to 120 million years ago), Hauterivian (136 to 130 mya) and Aptian (125 to 112 mya) eras.

Now, given that these guys are stating that life is less than 10,000 years old in the GRI newsletter, yet in their own professional work (which they and the GRI are using as a source of authority and credibility) they are clearly stating that it's much older, there's an incongruity. I'm not accusing them of anything, but I do think that the inconsistency is interesting and important in this discussion.

OK, here is the email. It is long. For those that don't like to read long posts, I have highlighted portions that stand out to me.

Dear Shane,

Thank you for your question. The Geoscience Research Institute supports the belief of the Seventh-day Adventist Church that the creation account of Genesis is historically true, and describes a sequence of supernatural events that occurred within a week of time.

Each member of the GRI recognizes the discordance between this belief and the majority view of the scientific community. We have not attempted to develop “official” positions with respect to questions that come up, such as age of the earth, length of the ice age, whether dinosaurs were preserved on the ark or destroyed by the flood, etc. However, to the best of my knowledge, each member of the Institute is well acquainted with the data, and has accepted the Biblical creation story as historical and reliable, with the realization that this is a choice based on faith in the revelation of Scripture, knowing that many scientists disagree, and also knowing that such questions of history cannot be empirically demonstrated.

From my own perspective, I believe all of Genesis to be true, but not all details are of equal significance. The importance of the age of life on the earth is that it should fit with the points emphasized in Scripture. Scripture makes sense in a short chronology (thousands of years) but not in a long geological time scale (millions or billions of years) with eons of death and suffering before humans appeared. The most significant points, in my view, are those that are repeated in other parts of Scripture. I see a few critical issues that seem to be emphasized in other parts of Scripture. Here is my list:

1. God is the Creator. This point is emphasized throughout the Bible. John says “All things were made by Him.” Paul affirms that even the pagan can understand that there must be an eternal, powerful God, even though men may refuse to believe in Him. However, even creation involves faith, according to Hebrews 11:3. This point is significant for the story of redemption, and it is also significant for the historical sciences. Any scientific effort that contradicts the creatorship of God is in contradiction to Scripture. Scientists often state that science cannot make a statement about this point; nevertheless, they disallow any reference to God or supernatural activity in science, while at the same time constructing a materialist approach to origins. To the extent this is done (it is the dominant approach, although not universal), it is an implicit rejection of God’s creatorship, and is equivalent to taking a position against the creatorship of God.
2. The universe had a beginning. We accept this without much controversy, since science points to the same conclusion. In this case, science and Scripture agree. However, this fact does have important implications. If there was a beginning, and if God created voluntarily, then the universe has no existence or laws of its own, but has only those properties that God continuously provides. Thus, experimental science is the effort to identify the manner in which God continually upholds the universe “by His word of power” (Hebrews 1:3; cf Colossians 1:17). Experimental science rarely encounters conflict with Scripture.
3. Living creatures and the environment which supports them were created in six days, with the first week ending with the Sabbath rest of the seventh day. This point is affirmed in the ten commandments, and the significance of Sabbath is affirmed in many Biblical passages. Every New Testament writer refers, with implicit agreement, to some aspect of the Genesis creation account. Hebrews 4:4 refers explicitly to God’s resting on the seventh day. Scientists reject this view, so there is significant conflict here.
4. A diversity of living organisms was created from the very first. God fills different habitats with diverse organisms in different acts of creation: land plants on day 3, marine habitats on day 5, flying creatures on day 5, and land animals on day 6. Multiple lines of diversity are also mentioned with respect to the ark story. The significance is not so much in the specific details as in the point that God actively and supernaturally created diversity. This becomes important when dealing with theories that living creatures formed through natural processes, a theory proposed not only by Charles Darwin, but by the ancient Greeks, at least as far back as the epicureans. This view is not consistent with Scripture.
5. Humans were created separately, and with special characteristics not shared with the animals. This view is held throughout Scripture, that God holds humans in special esteem, “more than many sparrows.” The scientific community recognizes distinctive human qualities, but is divided over whether they are merely extensions of animal characteristics or whether they are truly uniquely human. In combination with the other points listed above, this point brings significance to the question of origins, the nature of humans, whether there is any solution to the problem of evil, etc. I would guess that this point, more than any other, provides much of the passion in the debate over origins.

There are a few other crucial elements in a Biblical understanding of our world, and that are closely related to the creation story. Although not part of the actual creation account, they are intimately related to it.

6. Humans were created better than they are now, but fell away from God through distrust of God’s words. Even the evidence of their senses was not a safe excuse for disbelieving God.
7. The earth was cursed because of sin. Much of what we now observe is not original with the creation, but has developed as a result of sin. This includes suffering, violence, disease and death.
8. Death is the result of human sin. Death is not original to the creation, but an unwelcome intruder that will eventually be eliminated in a new creation.

I think I can state without reservation that the members of GRI all believe the points I listed above.

But what about the age of life on the earth? Ancient life spanning hundreds of millions of years does not fit with the above points. Since death came in with humans, the entire record of death had to be produced after the entrance of sin. Thus we accept that the history of life is a rather short history, measured in thousands, but not millions of years. I do not see any explicit Biblical teaching about an exact age for the earth, and I do not have enough information to know the exact age. It could be 6,000 years, as many believe. But if it is a few thousand years more, it doesn’t matter to me, as long as it is consistent with what the Bible teachers. I think the important points are the relationship of God, man and nature, and the Biblical data on this point do not fit into the long chronology of geological time. Thus, I reject geological time of long ages, even without knowing how to answer many questions about radioisotope dating and the geological record.

Regarding the use of geological terms in publications of members of the Institute, I can offer a word of explanation. Terms such as Eocene or Pliocene or Cambrian refer to specific parts of the geological column. If one wishes to communicate with others regarding findings in the geological column, it is necessary to use terms that can be understood. We do not endorse the age interpretations applied to these terms by the general scientific community; we need to use them to give the data and interpretations a geological context.

If we wish to deal with questions of age, we are limited to writing in creationist publications, because ordinary secular journals would not publish material that attacks the assumptions of the secular scientific endeavor. Steven Mayer got a paper published in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington in which he reviewed the Cambrian Explosion and concluded that naturalistic processes were insufficient to explain it, and that intelligent design was a better explanation. As a result, the journal’s editor was fired. Guillermo Gonzales is a renowned and well-published astronomer, but his support for intelligent design was sufficient for him to be denied tenure at his university. Forrest Mims was a science editor at Scientific American some years ago. When it was discovered that he did not accept Darwinism, he was fired. As far as I know, none of these men believes in a six-day creation, and I understand Mayer believes in an ancient history of life; their crime is that they believe God is active in nature, and this is enough to exclude them from advancement in science. Therefore, to claim that creationists are not doing science because they do not publish explicitly creationist conclusions in scientific journals reflects a profound misunderstanding of the situation.

Geoscience publishes a little journal, entitled Origins, in which the main article is always peer-reviewed. In addition, each entire issue is read and approved by the editorial board. The articles are all posted on our websited, http://www.grisda.org, and are available free. Some other creationist journals are also utilizing peer review, and the quality of creationist publications has improved substantially as a result.

We sometimes hear the comment that GRI scientists are not doing science. This is untrue; most members of the Institute publish in secular, peer-reviewed journals. This point is sometimes met with the complaint that these are not creationist publications, just general scientific papers. I have already explained why this is the case. This is why creationists need their own, peer-reviewed journals, where creation theory can be explored, criticized, and improved.

Another question might be why GRI even bothers with science if we are going to place the authority of the Bible over that of science. There is more than one answer to that question. First, we share the curiosity of those who study science and who would like to know how things work. Therefore, we study science. When we find a conflict with the Bible and science, we wonder about how to find harmony, and we see opportunity for further study. It is not unprecedented for someone to believe that science will eventually improve its understanding, so that former conflicts are resolved. It is well known that general relativity and quantum mechanics are in conflict, and nobody has the resolution, yet scientists do not stop studying them. They believe that eventually a resolution will be found. Second, we study science because we want our witness about Jesus Christ to be informed on the issues that challenge those we try to reach. We want to know the very best, more accurate and most dependable positions to present to those who have questions. We want to be able to provide the best information to those who struggle with the issues of science and faith, and to model a life of informed faith.

I hope these few comments are helpful. Many books have been written, and many more will be written on these issues.

Best wishes,
Jim Gibson
Director

I hope you'll thank Dr Gibson for his time and for his very thoughtful letter. It's much appreciated. I agree with his characterisation of the situation.

I'm not sure it applies to Dr Sauvagnat's paper, which is pretty explicitly about dates and gives dates for life over 100 million years ago, but I do accept his general point about the difficulty of publishing creationist papers in general scientific journals.

I would continue to argue that the GRI scientists do science, and they do creationism, but when they are doing one they are not doing the other and vice versa. Clearly Dr Gibson sees the situation differently.

How did Christians get involved in the Envionmentalist religion?

It began when believing scientists & teachers approached the popular & WEALTHY academic Community and said “we want a place at the table.” And to gain that place at the table they were willing to compromise many of their beliefs. For instance, there are two completely different ways to approach the Bible. One group (this is the right way) goes to the Word of God and studies it for him or herself and accepts the truth in it. Whatever else they discover in science & nature is then called to yield to the fundamental truth of the word of God. Fortunately many of our Adventist scholars anchor their faith in this manner. But there is a second way, and it is growing increasingly more common. That is where a believer says “I am willing to set my faith aside and study science and nature as if God didn’t exist and then I will come back to the Bible see how it compares.” This, I believe is what James calls double-mindedness. “A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.”


warm (not global) regards,

olger

I think the folks at GRI would classify creationism as a discipline of science like chemistry, physics or biology. I think trying to classify it thus put us in the natural scientists' arena where we lose. I think it much better to classify creationism as a discipline of philosophy.